Why is the default WYSIWYG editor of Mambo always not a good choice?

leduytien · 31.08.2004, 15:14

I used Mambo (was MamboServer) for a long time and one of my questions was that they don't use other free WYSIWYG editors, insteads of the htmlarea2 (in 4.5 and older version). Why?

One of the disadvantages of the default WYSIWYG editor is that it doesn't support uploading directly picture through the "add picture" button (by "directly", I mean: you click on the "add image" button, browse the list of current images on the server. If not, you can choose a picture from your local hard drive, upload them, then click "add" to add it to the article. The default only let you type the URL of the image).

I had to install an add-on to have this feature on my website (www.leduytien.com - I used the extend version of HTMLArea3). I think this feature is more helpful than that in the default picture selector (the default let you choose pictures already be on the server to include with your article, but it doesn't let you choose specifically where to put them).

I had hoped that they will have a new editor in the coming version of Mambo. They had one. But still, it doesn't support uploading. I completely don't understand why they choose RTE editor (this one is really BAD). In the Candidate release version, they add another one: TinyMCE Editor. This one is better than RTE, but it still has the disadvantage above.

Why didn't they use HTMLArea3 or FCK Editor (the extended version). These HTML editors are clearly better. Perhaps, it will be a little heavier than the old one, but then you still be able to eliminate some unnecessary buttons on their toolbars (here, I think a "should-have" feature in the adminitration session is letting user decide which buttons to display on the toolbar of article editor in a web interface. It's also will be nice if they spend a little of time to make it possible to customize a version for user to publish article (faster to load) and a more advanced version for admin)

Certainly, I'm pretty sure that if Mambo team still choose those editors (RTE and TinyMCE) to be the default, someone (or me!) will made an add-on to use other editors. But I think they really should include the upload image feature in whatever they choose. REALLY. Let's us spend our time to make other more useful add-ons, instead of spend time just to have another editors.

stingrey · 31.08.2004, 16:39

The reason rte and tinymce were chosen are:

rte
It is the most x-browser compatible out of any of the wyswyig editors available. Thus it ensures that it will work on the widest possible range of browsers and operating systems. Others have issues working in other operatings systems like macs or browsers other than ie and mozilla.

tinymce
It produces the cleanest code (ie xhtml compliant) while still being far more x-browser compatible than most and having more advanced features than rte.

Should you wish to use others there always exsits 3rd party addons, the choice is there for you to use htmlarea3, etc
Also remember, that people have different preferences over what editor they wish to use, you'll find that no everyone agrees that htmlarea3 or fckeditor is better.

Also note that not all editors are easy to customise and we prefer to use the editors as is (limit the hacking of it) so that they can be easily upgraded when new versions of the editors are released.

leduytien · 01.09.2004, 06:40

The newest version of fckeditor now support both IE and Mozilla browsers. It also supports skin => that's why I think fckeditor now can be a good choice.

Anyway, I agree that people have different choices. Above is just my opinion and my hope ^_^

mhutchin · 01.09.2004, 11:05

Is anyone looking at adding the extra functionality that some of the htmlarea mods had, such as mambolinks etc??

fuzzyfree · 01.09.2004, 17:11

FCKEditor does not run well at all on Mac/Linux/BSD browsers, often causing the browser to fail (in my experience). For most cases RTE or TinyMCE are absolutely stable (especially RTE) and reliable.

My biggest desire is to have an editor that will run in High Security environments. I am developing a site that will be used by the US Government, and because they dissable many things and make it difficult to run javascript, I think it would be nice to see an editor that was pure server side code (even though it would be slower, it would be x-browser and run in any environment.)

Xalon · 01.09.2004, 19:32

You can't make a pure server side editor. Things like selected text cannot survive a round trip.

fuzzyfree · 02.09.2004, 21:55

Yes that sounds like a pretty difficult proposition... the only way i can think of getting around that is by creating some sort of simple tagging system where a user can just place special charachers around the text and then hit the option they would like to have applied....

IE:
the user enters the following:

Code:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

Then the user decides that he would like the word "jumps" to be bold. He then adds the selector tags to the selection like so:

Code:

The quick brown fox (#jumps#) over the lazy dog.

He then hits the "bold" button on the editor and the info is submitted to the php script, and returned is the result:

The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog.

stingrey · 03.09.2004, 10:26

Quote:

creating some sort of simple tagging system where a user can just place special charachers around the text and then hit the option they would like to have applied

Actually an editor like this exists, I remember reading about it on forum a post here or on the official forums, problem is I cant seem to find the post.

postmaster · 03.09.2004, 20:58

how do i change the wysiwyg interface? to FCK v2? or any other one for that matter?

leduytien · 05.09.2004, 09:53

There is documents at FCKeditor website. I think you just need to change the configurations in the setting file. I haven't look in the codes of FCKeditor v.2 yet.